How to Attract a Qualified Audience at Your Next Event

04-03-2018

If you believe that selling all the tickets for your next event automatically equals success, think again. The quality of your attendees will directly influence your ROI. It's just like running a business.

You don't want to attract or interact with people who express zero interest in your products or services. You want to engage high-quality leads that will respond positively to your communication and services.

To assure the impact and the success of your event, you must design an efficient marketing campaign that’s strictly focused on attracting high-quality guests. Of course, the characteristics that will define the qualified audience depend significantly on your goals.

For example, if your intention is to run a powerful networking event, you'll want to attract those people who have something valuable to offer. If your objective is to create a post-event community, you'll want to find high-quality attendees who’ll react positively to your communication efforts. Finally, if you want to gather a pool of event guests with whom you could engage subsequently in a lead nurture process, you'll have to find people who are interested in what you have to offer. In other words, you can easily adapt the 'high-quality attendee' definition to your needs and goals.

However, it's not always easy to attract qualified attendees to your event. The first struggle is understanding who your ideal guest is. Second, your event marketing campaign may fail to connect with the people you want to attract. Third, you may not know how to actually engage with and make your event interesting for high-quality attendees.

It’s a tricky aspect of event marketing to navigate. Considering this, we put together a few tips on how to attract a qualified audience for your next event:

Tip 1. Define your attendee persona profile

To increase your event marketing campaign's efficiency, you must understand who is at the receiving end. The essential part is to understand who your qualified attendees are. What is your ideal guest's profile? What are the needs, fears, expectations, and motivations of the people you want to see at your event?

To optimize the results of your marketing campaign, make sure to target an extremely specific niche. For example, instead of planning an event for IT professionals, plan an event for IT professionals who have developed successful iOS apps. This will help you skyrocket the impact of your laser-like messages. Apart from that, by pinpointing a detailed attendee profile, you’ll design a powerful communication that will attract a specific type of individual, and avoid having unqualified guests register.

Tip 2. Base your marketing campaign on invitations only

If you want attract qualified attendees, you can create a strong database of professionals whom you could attract via mailing marketing. In this case, you can collaborate with different companies and corporations to promote your event within their employees. By doing so, you’ll make your event accessible only to particular types of high-quality professionals.

Tip 3. Correctly communicate the event's value proposition

To attract the right type of attendee, you must send the right message. A high-quality audience won't pay attention to events that aren’t promising. That's why you need to present the value proposition of your event and highlight what your guests will gain by attending.

Tip 4. Design a rigorous registration procedure

If you want to keep your options open, which will help you reach more potential high-qualified attendees, you can set up a strict registration procedure. For example, let's say that your event is aiming to reach professionals from certain companies only.

In this case, you can indicate an obligatory information field in the registration form that allows the registrants to list their company. Apart from that, you can ask for a proof of identification as an employee of those entities, such as an employee ID number. If there's an 'outsider', he or she won’t be able to complete the registration form.

Tip 5. Set up an attendee vetting system

Finally, don't forget to activate the guest vetting system. This will give you the opportunity to accept those people who qualify to attend your event and deny the ones who don’t meet the attendance requirements.

Wrap up

You can't plan an event for people who don't care about your messages. Attracting the right type of attendees is the core requirement for success. To do so, you must first identify the profile of your ideal guest. Then, you must master a powerful event marketing strategy that appeals to your ideal attendees. Pay extra attention to how you are communicating the value proposition of your event. This will increase the chances of reaching and engaging a qualified audience. Finally, don’t forget to design a specialized registration form and set up a vetting system.

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